


How Do I Light Your Fire (Without an Arson Charge)?

by Seiberwing



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Asexual Character, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Pyromania, Series Spoilers, Time Ghost, Time Shenanigans, Unconventional courtship, brief mention of sex, feelings talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-13 01:40:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7957276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiberwing/pseuds/Seiberwing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray attempts to court Mick on his own terms. Mick's terms turn out to be more complicated than previously expected. Ray's new agony aunt has his own agenda.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Do I Light Your Fire (Without an Arson Charge)?

Ray liked to think he was doing his best, as much as Rip had tried to ban the use of that phrase from the Waverider. He’d come to Mick on his own terms. He’d used phrases like ‘partner’ instead of ‘friend’ or ‘going steady’, ideally working its way towards also being a euphemism for ‘boyfriend’. Their not-dates were at seedy bars or the diners where Mick exalted in stuffing his face with as many greasy carbs as possible, even when Ray could have taken Mick to the fanciest restaurant in Central City once he’d also paid a spa to scrub and polish Mick into the sort of man they’d let into one of those restaurants. Ray’s first major forays into gift-giving were a crate of PopTarts in a discontinued flavor, then footage of post-2016 soccer games, then making a particularly large explosion on the ship of a temporal bounty hunter who’d been giving Mick some shit.

Mick had stolen things worth millions of dollars in his time as a full-time criminal and he still drank cheap beer and wore jackets that frayed at the cuffs. Access to a guy who could get Mick that level of money legally wouldn’t make him start being snobby about wine, as much as the cheap beer tasted like wormwood going down Ray’s throat. (He felt he was starting to get used to it.)

And Ray had to be slow about it. Oh so very slow, like chasing a shy bull elephant, and with an equal amount of respect for boundaries. Buying the company Mick worked for or anything else in that line of idiocy wouldn’t get Mick on his side, except maybe to have a better angle with which to deck him on the way out. Ray occasionally harbored the urge to go back in time and smack past-him upside the head for the stunts he’d pulled going after Felicity. (The cheap beer had brought him unpleasantly close to actually doing it, until Sara and Jax ganged up to sit on him until the urge went away.)

Mick was blunt and rough, but he had his own walls, and Ray was carefully navigating the places where a tiny door would open in the walls and a disreputable figure would beckon Ray through a hidden passage taking him that much closer to Mick Rory’s heart. Or at least other places on Mick Rory.

“Can I see your heat gun for a second?”

Mick looked up from where he was doing target practice on the remains of a stranded battleship on a coast that had dried up decades ago. His eyes narrowed as he looked Ray up and down, as if concerned that Ray would take the flamethrower and run away with it.

“I made an improvement for it,” Ray encouraged, and reluctantly Mick handed it over. 

“You break it, I shave your head,” he said, watching Ray delicately attach a piece of hand-welded gadgetry to the side of his precious firearm. 

“It should be better than not broken.”

“I don’t like your ‘should’s.”

Please don’t let it be broken. Please please. He didn’t want to have to explain to Cisco why he needed the pyromaniac’s gun fixed. Ray clicked the final component into place and sent up a little prayer to whatever form of god protected men who dated beefy criminals.

“Here, try it now.” He put the gun into Mick’s hand and folded his fingers around it, pressing one of them to the tiny lever at the bottom. Mick’s thick hands were callused, interspersed with little smooth patches of scar tissue, and Ray wanted…well, Ray wanted a lot of things with those hands. Right now he was barely breathing as Mick let Ray’s fingers linger on his wrist. Those hard eyes were still on him, dark and suspicious.

“Okay, uh, you’re gonna need to stand further back for this.” Ray negotiated Mick to back up with him, broad shoulders pressed to his chest. Please don’t be broken.

Mick scowled. “Getting real snuggly here, Haircut, this better be worth it.”

“Okay.” Ray’s finger negotiated Mick’s hand to the trigger and said, as un-sensually as he could with his lips at Mick’s ear, “Now fire.”

Mick pulled the trigger and a massive gout of blue flame exploded outward from the muzzle of his gun. The sheet of metal, already scorched from Mick’s earlier practice, began to fold inward and liquidate under the force of the terrific heat. Ray had a front-row view of a massive grin spreading across Mick’s face, thrown into sharp shadows by the inferno, as he held the trigger down and watched the blue-hot fire burn a hole through a solid half-inch of steel.

The flame only lasted for twenty seconds before it cooled and returned to lively orange, and Mick reluctantly lowered the gun. “Not bad,” he mumbled, awestruck. (Practically aroused, really.) “Can you make it last longer?”

“I can try. It’s just a prototype, I’m sure I can improve on it.” Ray let his fingers rest on Mick a moment longer before withdrawing them and sticking them back in his pockets. Baby steps.

“Good. Good, you do that, Ray.” Mick clapped him on the back, eyes still fixed on the cooling metal. “Go do your science at it.”

Ray fistpumped the air as soon as he made it out of sight. Some people did the VE-Day kiss, some people were Mick Rory.

Later in the night Ray had shown up with a twelvepack and asked if Mick wanted to watch some sports while he worked on repairs to his suit. Mick was in a tattered muscle shirt that showed off his admirably broad shoulders and the gnarls of glossy burn scars that were slick against Ray’s skin when Ray casually flopped an arm around him twenty minutes after kickoff.

No response. Mick went on with his explanation of which player was which and why that one coach was a bastard and how that move was clearly legal even if there was blood on the opposing player’s sneaker. When the fit young men in tight shorts scrambled out onto the field again, Mick put his weight against Ray like a protective dog. 

_Captain, we have friendly skies and are cleared for takeoff. All systems go, deploying the head on shoulder maneuver. We have impact in three, two, one…cheek has landed on shoulder. Repeat, successful landing, no hostility from natives. Remaining on course for Mick Rory intimacy, make sure all cargo is secured in case of turbulence._

God, Mick put out heat like a furnace. Ray lounged against him and soaked up the smell of alcohol with the light hint of singed metal that had permanently attached itself to Mick’s skin like a faint cologne. This was nice. They were at Base 0.5. A few more soccer games and they might make it all the way to light nuzzling--

Whoop, there it went. Ray found himself grabbed by the shoulders and flung down onto the couch. Surprise widened Ray’s eyes at the same moment as a giddy smile flashed onto his face as Mick straddled his hips. On the TV, the soccer stadium crowd went wild, but Mick’s own depression was blank.

Ok, Ray, let’s breathe here. He had lube in one of his jean pockets and a condom in the other. Mick almost certainly liked topping and Ray had seen enough of Mick in the gulag shower to know that the plumbing was sizably proportioned to the architecture. A man that rough in the rest of his life probably had sex roughly too; walking properly tomorrow would be out of the question. Ray mentally went through his script of filthy language and let his hands wander down Mick’s shoulders. Houston, we are ready for--

“Stop.”

One hand pinned Ray’s wrists to the arm of the couch. Ray blinked, then groaned as the other hand (not just a thug but a thief, and that meant dexterity) undid the button of Ray’s jeans, yanked them down just enough to expose him, and delivered what could be best described as a grumpy handjob.

It was good foreplay, and Ray let go of his nerves as Mick went to work, dirty script forgotten in favor of using the word ‘yes’ at staggered intervals. Mick’s eyes stayed fixed on Ray’s face the entire time, scowling only the slightest bit, that default expression Mick wore when nothing had gotten him mad _yet_. That was fine. This was fine. Better than fine, they might actually get all the way tonight and it would be so great…

And then it was over with a rough jerk of Ray’s hips, and Mick went back to sitting on the couch watching the game. Ray stared at the ceiling, taking in the sounds of jeering crowds and intermittent vuvuzelas

“That was, uh. Wow, thanks. Do you want a…I mean, I don’t want to be greedy here…”

“Nope.” Mick didn’t look back at him. Ray sat up just enough to note that Mick’s nether regions were about as indifferent as their owner.

“Okay. Just let me know if you need anything.”

“You could get me another beer.”

Ray rolled off the couch, trying to hold his pants up, and limped toward the beer crate without looking back.

Timejump the WaveRayder a half hour forward and Ray was staring in Mick’s bathroom mirror, trying to take the situation apart. Mick hadn’t told him to fuck off, which was nice. Mick generally said what he meant. Was Mick just not attracted to guys? Or maybe not attracted to Ray? People not being attracted to Ray wasn’t a problem he’d faced on the past, but Mick Rory’s sexuality also wasn’t a problem he’d faced in the past. Ray looked in the mirror at his perfectly sculpted jaw and coiffed hair, and wondered if he’d still look all right with a crude buzzcut, and also why the mirror looked like someone had set off a firecracker next to it.

“Rough night, cowboy?”

Some voices carried personalities of their own. Some voices sang or lilted or graveled. The voice behind Ray, as it always did but for the fact it should have permanently stopped doing so, was sneering. Ray whipped around, stumbled over Waverider’s technologically advanced toilet, fell backwards, and yanked himself back upward to gape at Leonard Snart slouching against the wall with a smirk so sharp it could cut glass. His Captain Cold glasses were hanging folded from his collar and he was wearing a dark skirt (kilt?) below a black cardigan.

Clasped in his hand, a spot of saccharine brightness in the shadows, was a back of generic brand BBQ sweet potato chips.

“I. I. What. I. You? You’re here and—but you’re—“

Len rolled his eyes. “Ah. It’s the first time.” 

“What?” Ray tried to grab the sink for stability but it was too slick and he fell backwards again. Len snickered at him. 

“Take it easy, Palmer. Whatever questions you’ve got, you’ll have figured out the answers the next time you see me.” He took a long, leisurely bite of a chip, savoring the pleasure of making Ray wait breathlessly for him to elaborate as much as he did the artificially flavored crunchy grease. “From your perspective, I’m going to disappear in about five minutes and appear on the bridge two weeks from now. From mine, I just heard you explain that to me.”

“Oh. Time travel. That thing.” Okay. The one thing it was okay to be confused about. Ray accepted the state of his confusion with as much grace as possible.

“Turns out blowing up something that influences the fabric of time itself does weird things to you.” Len shrugged. “No spoilers, though. I’d hate to ruin the fun for you and Stein.”

Of course. If Len told him what Ray had told him in Ray’s future, which Len only knew because Ray had told him in the future, which Ray only knew because Len had come back to his past and told him, then at the very least they’d give Rip a monstrous headache.

“Oh. Okay. Appreciated.” Ray took an uneasy seat on the toilet as Len continued onward with the chips. He wondered if this was the first time Len had eaten since he sacrificed himself at the Oculus. Wondered if Len was even alive at all, and how many times he’d blink in and out of existence in Ray’s future. Wondered what happened when you timejumped without a ship, if you remembered all the eons you’d passed or if it was like going to sleep and waking up again. Wondered why…

Ray tilted his head up and squinted at the possible time ghost of Len, grabbing on to the simplest question in the face of so many more complicated ones.

“Where’d you get the chips?”

“Jax.”

“And your glasses?”

“Sara."

“Why are you in a kilt?”

“Because I want to be. That’s three for you, so it’s my turn now.” Len pointed at him with one finger “Why are you camped out in the bathroom in your underwear?”

“Uh…y’know, I just. Rough day fighting all that crime.”

Now two fingers were pointing at Ray, and both of them seemed very judgey for how many wallets they’d likely helped lift. “Better question: Why are you in Mick’s bathroom in your underwear?”

Ray went deer-in-headlights. “I. Uh.” There was no amount of ‘isn’t what it looks like’ that would cover this situation. 

Three fingers and a smirk to go with them. “Third question: Why are you in Mick’s bathroom in your underwear looking like your ex-wife ran over your ice cream cone? Getting fucked by a criminal not everything the romance novels told you it would be?”

Ray’s jaw worked up and down as he worked for some kind of response that wasn’t ‘well, yes’. When Len put it like that, it sounded like Ray was some kind of crude seducer.

“You’re trying to freak me out,” he finally managed. “Get under my skin.” He longed for his pants or a bathrobe to cover up. Talking to Leonard Snart was hard enough when you had clothes on.

“And it’s working like a charm. Let me guess, you got to first base and then Mick wandered off the baseball field. He’s passed out shirtless in the other room, and you’re in your underwear because you were really hoping your manly physique would get him hot enough to lure him back out of the dugout.”

Ray flushed, his bare toes flexing so Len wouldn’t see his hands fidget. “You just came back from the dead, why is talking about this your priority?”

Len’s sharp tongue darted out to sweep a dusting of artificially flavored powder from his sharp-grinning lips. “The last time you felt romantically insecure you picked a fistfight with Vandal Savage, and that’s when you weren’t trying to get into a pyromaniac’s pants. When my chances of getting back into a normal timeline rest on you keeping your head together, I’d like to make sure you’re not too distracted.”

Ray hunched up his shoulders and took a deep breath, trying to call up the reserves of the crass manliness he’d been trying to imitate for Mick’s sake. Real men don’t blush over talking about their sex lives. “It’s not. It’s. We’re taking it slow, okay?”

Len shook his head. “Mick Rory doesn’t really do slow.”

“Yeah, well, he’s been through a lot.” The metal was starting to come back to Ray’s voice. “More than any of us, in some ways. The Time Masters tried to cook his brain twice and kept him as a puppet for even he doesn’t know how long, he’s gotten tortured, he’s been beaten up in about a dozen different centuries, he lost his best friend—“ 

“Also I did nearly murder him,” Len put in, as calm as someone making additions to their grocery list.

“And the rest of us let you nearly do it.” As much as Mick said he didn’t care, Ray didn’t believe it was impossible to stop caring about a thing like that. “He’s got a lot of stuff to work through, even if he doesn’t want to admit it, and I’m not going to push him into anything until he’s ready and…oh. Oh. Oh.”

Leonard arched up an eyebrow as Ray slid forward to drop his head into his hands.

“You and him. You were…”

“Were,” said Len firmly. “Ship’s sailed. Doesn’t stop him from being my partner, but this isn’t me trying to defend my territory.” He took a step across the tiny bathroom and found another wall to slouch on. The chips bag was starting to crumple in his hands. “Or me doing the overprotective dad shotgun-and-shovel talk. If you hurt Mick, Mick won’t need anyone else stepping in to make you pay for it. I’d just prefer the guy on the other end of a portable flamethrower be emotionally stable while you’re working out this whole temporal dislocation thing for me.”

“I wasn’t trying to replace you,” Ray said into his hands. “I just like him, y’know? I didn’t expect to. He’s nowhere near my type, and I’m definitely not up to his standards.”

“Did you get the grumpy handjob?”

Ray gave a mournful nod, staring at his feet on the cold metal floor. There was a noise of faint approval from the opposite corner.

“Good. Grumpy handjob practically means he wants to take you to the altar.”

Ray glanced up. “Wait, what?”

Len perched on the rim of the bathtub, finishing the last of the chips. “Mick isn’t a guy who responds well to social pressure, or likes to do people favors. If he’s doing something, it’s either because he wants to do it or there’s a gun pressed to the back of his head, and I don’t think you’re kinky enough for the second one. You got the grumpy handjob because he likes you, and wants you to get what you want, even if it’s not something he cares for.”

“But he didn’t want a…I mean he didn’t…”

“Get it up?”

Ray nodded. “Yeah, exactly, thanks.” It was so much easier to let Len do the dirty talk for him, discussion of penis activities really wasn’t his wheelhouse.

“I’d be surprised if he did. Mick doesn’t get it up for anyone. Ever, as long as I’ve known him. He’s…” Len made a twisting motion next to his head. “Wired different. Never got it myself, but it doesn’t seem to bother him.” He wadded up the bag and tossed it over his shoulder, licking the powder off his fingers.

Oh. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Oh with so many ‘h’s afterward there was practically no space left on Ray’s mental blackboard. “Mick’s asexual. Oh my god.” Ray shot up, jaw hanging open, the physical force of revelation nearly generating a physical lightbulb to hang over his head in resplendent glow. “It all makes sense!”

Len frowned. “Just said he wasn’t sexual.”

“No, not a-space-sexual. A-no space-sexual. No sexual attraction. Ever.” Ray went off on a tear about statistical population portions and noted historical and literary figures, waving his hands as he wandered the tiny square footage of the bathroom. Yes! He’d solved it! He’d solved Mick Rory!

“You’re acting really excited for a guy who’s just found out he won’t get laid,” said Len as he watched the scientist pace back and forth.

“But now I know what’s going on! Why he’s acting this way! I, I need to tell him, tell him that I _get_ it, that we can get this worked out!”

Len rolled his eyes. “That’s great, that’s great. Don’t forget to figure out how to rescue me after you’re done getting your love life sorted out, kay?”

Ray sucked in a few deep breaths, getting himself simmered down. He could _do_ this. He could figure out Mick out. He could solve the equation and win the prize. And get the grumpy handjobs, but only when Mick wanted, and with lots of careful discussion, and it would be _amazing_. “Right, yes. Getting you out of the timestream. I will definitely prioritize that one.”

“Glad we’re all on the same page now.”

“Whoo.” Another deep breath, riding out the manic high of nerd victory. “But I _get it_ now. And I won’t let you down on this, I’ll make it work for him.”

“Not about me, for once. Just about him.” In the cracked mirror Ray could see Len smiling. “Mick and I always were a pair of opposites. It’s why we worked so well. Hot, cold, rough, smooth, go for everyone, go for nobody. Whatever it is he wants about you, it’s not your ass. Somewhere in there you’re doing something rig-.”

Silence. Ray turned to see the way the chips bag gently rolled towards where air was rushing to fill the empty space where Len had been. The bright light of nerd victory dimmed to a soothing glow, and Ray bolted from the bathroom.

“Mick! Hey, Mick! Mick, wake up!”

Mick grunted as he was shaken side to side, weakly slapping away Ray as his eyes opened. “Mmm. Better be important.”

“It is, it’s the most important! I get it now, Mick, I understand!” Ray fell to his knees besides the bed, unheeding of how this put him at perfect punching height for a guy who’d only just managed to hit NREM Stage 3 of his sleep cycle. “We can go as slow as you want on this and do grumpy handjobs and if we never do it at all it’s fine, I just want to spend time with you as a person, and watch sports and make explosions, and none of the rest of it matters to me because I want you.” 

Mick looked at him with sleep-blurred eyes. “You woke me up for feelings talk?”

Ray paused to catch his breath. “Yeah. Yeah, I did because it’s important and you’re important, and whatever we call this thing we’ve got is important and…oh!” He paused to raise a finger. “Also Len’s still alive except he’s trapped in time and he’s going to show up in two weeks after I figure out how to save him.”

The bleary look continued, as if Mick was waiting for more nonsense to spew out of his pet physicist, and when nothing further came Mick did punch him. Gently, on the arm, while smiling. It felt like a bouquet of roses.

“Then get your damn pants on, Haircut! Science now, feelings later!”

Ray scrambled off on his knees and vaulted the couch to fetch his jeans, heart singing like the last aria of an opera. ‘Feelings later’ (not never, just _later_ ) felt like ‘I love you'.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, the Leonard Snart kilt is real. Go google it.


End file.
